West German published patent application No. 2,608,462, which is a substantial counterpart of U.S. Pat. No. 4,026,444, discloses a garment folding machine of the general type to which the present invention relates. In using the machine of that patent to fold a shirt, the operator places the buttoned, flattened and spread-out garment, front side down, onto a support plate that supports the central longitudinally extending portion of the garment and over side folding plates extending to opposite sides of the support plate and arranged to support longitudinally extending side portions of the shirt. The central portions of the shirt tails overlie a rear folding plate. When the shirt is thus arranged, a front cover plate that is hinged to the front of the machine is swung down over the collar and upper central portion of the shirt, to flatwise overlie these and the support plate. Thereafter a rear cover plate, hinged to the rear of the rear folding plate, is swung downwardly and forwardly to flatwise overlie the central tail portions of the shirt and the rear folding plate. Downward movement of the rear cover plate to its operative position causes the machine to be started in its automatic folding cycle. First one and then the other of the side folding plates move edgewise inwardly over the cover plates to fold the longitudinally extending side portions of the shirt over its central portion and into overlapping relation to one another. When the side folding plates have returned to their starting positions, the rear folding plate moves forwardly more or less edgewise, to fold the tail portion of the shirt upwardly over its central portion and over the overlapped side portions. A stapling device then fastens together the several superimposed layers of the shirt to maintain it in folded condition. Thereafter the front cover plate automatically swings up to its raised position and the shirt can be slid off of it, upwardly and rearwardly, ready for packaging.
It is desirable that a shirt or similar garment which has been folded and packaged for sale should display a completely smooth front surface and that no parts should hang out at the sides of the folded garment. However, with the above described machine there was a possibility that, owing to friction or static electricity, the longitudinally extending side portions of the garment might cling to the side folding plates as those plates returned to their starting positions, and thus the garment could be partly unfolded and would display unevenly folded side edges, or its visible front surface could have wrinkles or could be objectionably loose rather than being under a smoothing and flattening tension. To avoid these problems it was often the practice of the operator of such a machine to manually restrain portions if the garment against unfolding and to manually displace portions of it as necessary to achieve a desired tensioning of its front surface. However, the operator's hands could not remain on the garment during the forward motion of the rear folding plate, and any tension that had been imposed upon the garment was likely to be lost as soon as the operator's hands were removed. Furthermore, the need for the operator to provide manual assistance to the machine imposed a strain upon the operator, required a slowing-down of the machine cycle, and required the operator to be cooperating with the machine at a time when the operator could have been more profitably employed in some other occupation.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,367,261 discloses a shirt folding table that merely served as an auxiliary which aided in the folding of shirts and required all operations to be performed manually. It comprised a cover plate that was swung down over a shirt positioned on the folding table and on which there was mounted a clamping device in the form of a claw. The claw, which was disposed on the longitudinal axis of the cover plate, could be manually moved between an inoperative position and a clamping position and tended to be retained in each of those positions under spring bias. It was so arranged on the cover plate that it remained uncovered as the longitudinally extending side portions of the shirt were folded. In its clamping position it rested on the folded-in side portions near their shoulder edges, in an area where those side portions overlapped one another. Since this claw was intended merely as an aid to a person doing manual folding, its use was discretionary with that person. When employed, it engaged the folded-in portions of the shirt only in a limited area at the shoulders, and therefore it could not tension the shirt in the transverse direction so as to produce a stretching and flattening of the displayed front part of the shirt.
The present invention has for its object the improvement of an automatic garment folding machine of the general type disclosed in the above mentioned West German published patent application, whereby such a machine, once started in its automatic operation, no longer needs attention or cooperation from an operator but can consistently achieve very neat and satisfactory folding and fastening of a shirt or similar garment, assuredly causing the folded garment to have straight and regular side fold lines and to display a smooth, flat front surface.
It is also an object of this invention to provide an automatically operable clamping device for a garment folding machine of the character described, whereby folded-over longitudinally extending side portions of a garment are securely held against displacement during and after the time that the side folding plates are being returned to their starting positions, so that those portions of the garment are restrained against disarrangement or partial unfolding by the outwardly moving side folding plates, and whereby the front central portion of the garment is so tensioned as to ensure that it will be flat and smooth at the time the garment is stapled or otherwise secured in its folded condition.
A further object of the invention is to provide a simple and inexpensive clamping device of the character just described that can be readily arranged for automatic operation in proper synchronism with other elements of an automatic garment folding machine and which makes possible a uniform tensioning of the displayed front part of every folded garment so that all garments folded by means of the machine can have a neat and uniform appearance.
Another and more specific object of the invention is to provide a clamping mechanism for a garment folding machine of the above described character, which clamping mechanism disengages itself from a folded garment as soon as the garment is ready to be removed from the machine but releases itself in such a manner as not to have any tendency to disarrange the folded garment nor interfere with its removal from the machine.